


Take Your Pride and Swallow

by yuletide_archivist



Category: Snatch. (2000)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-02-05
Updated: 2006-02-05
Packaged: 2018-01-25 02:09:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,144
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1626005
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuletide_archivist/pseuds/yuletide_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tommy and Turkish look out for each other. Faint slash.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Take Your Pride and Swallow

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Laylah

 

 

Under normal circumstances, I'm the one trying to keep Tommy out of as much trouble as he brings down upon my head.

I make sure he doesn't end up on the business end of anyone's fists or worse; been doing that for as long as I can remember. So long, in fact, that I forget he's not the cringing young man that he was a few years ago, jumping at shadows and too timid to talk back to anyone. He's grown, and there's a fierce streak in there now, a stubborn stain on his soul that's been put there by a lifetime of hard knocks, and I like to think that he got some of them from me. I was tough on him, of course, but I protected him, and despite the trouble he causes me, I don't know what I'd do without the silly little bastard.

When he walked into the arcade with his ridiculous toy gun and found me on the floor with a black wood baseball bat under my chin and feet on my wrists, his presence did nothing to reassure me. If anything, I thought I was twice as fucked, because now I'd have to watch Errol reduce him to a bloody little heap of bones and skin on top of getting my own nose broken. All up, not an afternoon that I'd like to look fondly back on in my old age.

"Get your arse up, Turkish," he ordered, not even looking at me, gun pointed evenly at the peanut gallery. He glared down the barrel with surprising coldness. Feet shifted off my shoulders. I tried not to exhale too fast.

For one wild moment, I thought that Tommy had done something right, bought a bullet to put in that dead weight he kept tucked in the waistband of his trousers, and then, silently, I called his bluff. He knew the power of a presence; he'd seen Bricktop enter a room and leave it shortly after, bearing what he came for, not having spoken a word or showed a weapon, given such authority by his history of cruelty. Errol was stupid, but he wasn't dumb. Guns had a habit of putting a hasty bit of ventilation in places you didn't want to be aired, and he wasn't taking any chances with one that was leveled at his face.

I said a silent prayer to Our Holy Mother of Assumptions, patron saint of Fuck Ups, that she would unleash her fury on someone other than me, just this once.

"Listen here son," Errol told him, patronizingly.

I swore Tommy almost smiled.

"I've got the gun, son," he said.

I was out the door of Jesters faster than I'd ever been before, not caring how silly I might have looked to the passing public as I shoved snotty private school boys and startled old ladies out of my way. If life has taught me one thing, it's to keep as much distance as possible between yourself and people who want to kill you, and better still if that distance is clogged with a sluggish afternoon crowd. I leant on the dirty van and pictured various ways of killing Errol and John while I caught my breath and wits.

Tommy followed shortly after, tossing me the car keys and a ghost of a smile.

I slid in on the drivers side and he scrambled through the passenger door, gun tucked out of sight and bottom lip clamped firmly between his front teeth.

"You all right Turkish?" He said, giving me a sideways glance.

"Yeah, yeah, I'm fine." I started the engine and gripped the steering wheel. "Be a lot better if you didn't always leave the fuckin' car unlocked," I said harshly. "One day you'll come back ta find you've got ta take the bus."

Tommy looked at his knees as he pulled his seatbelt across his chest. "It didn't get nicked, and I was only gone for a minute. I was in a hurry, usually I lock it." I glared at him. "Really Turkish, I do."

"Shut up Tommy," I said, easing out into the sparse mid-afternoon traffic.

"Put your seatbelt on," he said quietly, fiddling with the pockets of his trench coat. I ignored him, ashamed of myself.

The man just saved my teeth, nose and ribs from a sound pounding and I scolded him like some embittered old woman, borrowing trouble from the handiest home to avoid swallowing my pride and thanking him for doing my job. Worse still, he wasn't angry, just sad, looking from his sleeve cuffs to me with brown eyes pulled right off a kicked puppy. I've been told I don't deal well with most emotions, but I'd never believed it. I had my temper and a bottle of something that could moonlight as paint thinner, and that was all I needed.

Guilt was something I didn't deal with often.

"Did my mother die and leave `er job ta you?" I said snidely, though my mother was already dead and probably on a permanent rotisserie in her grave.

Tommy shrugged. "Just tryin' ta keep you alive. If you go through that windscreen, I will have scared them cunts for nothing."

"Any sensible person fears a fool with a gun," I told him, and he turned his face to the London streets and grey skies, but I couldn't shake the last look in his eyes, the utterly crushed, resentful anger.

"Put your fucking seatbelt on, Turkish," he told me. For the first time in years, I heard his voice shake.

I put the seatbelt on.

We didn't say anything for a while, got to the warehouse in relative silence, and I picked up a few things, including a message from Charlie that big things had gone down at the pykie site the night before and I should get my arse down there sharpish.

"Well," Tommy said, "we'll be off then, won't we Turkish?"  
More than anything, I didn't want him along. If there was one thing to count on even when the fabric of the universe was unraveling into a messy tangle of yarn, it would be that Tommy the tit would open his mouth at the wrong time. I didn't need Mickey angry, I needed him to fight.

Then again, I thought, Tommy might surprise me again, twice in the space of a few hours. And I couldn't leave him behind.

It would be a cold day in hell, I decided, but shrugged anyway while he stared up at the roof and scuffed his shoes on the concrete. Better to keep an eye on him.

When we got in the van again, he put his hand on my arm, reaching across the incredible gap of the middle seat and making me stop mid-key-turn. Startled, I looked at him, but he didn't move. He just sat there like a stunned fish, mouth partially open, eyes locked on mine. I jerked myself back into reality, looking away and finishing the turn of the key in the ignition so that the van growled to life, juddering alarmingly before settling.

I stared out the windshield, hands moving automatically over the stick-shift and nudging the steering wheel more out of habit than judgment.

His hand didn't move, just rode my arm.

"Was I too late, Turkish?" He asked, almost inaudibly, shrinking back into the door. He's a bit of a coward, my Tommy, but if I were him, I wouldn't be taking chances with my skin either.

My silence must have told of my utter confusion, because he elaborated.

"At the arcade, was I too late? Issat why you're angry?" His grip, if anything, tightened, and he boldly leaned forwards. "Are you all right?"

"I fail to see how our current situation could be in the same hemisphere as all right."

He withdrew at this, staring blankly out the window at the passing buildings. Selfishly, I kicked myself, because now he was going to sulk for the next few days and glare reproachfully at me like he always did when I was caustic towards his fussing and questioning, which was, frankly, disconcerting and distracting. On the upside, I would get little or no acknowledgement other than the odd `yes Turkish' or `no Turkish'. No chatter, a true blessing, and, thought I, ample compensation for the moping.

Tommy seemed to think I'd be hurt that he didn't care, because he was when I didn't.

There was the guilt again, no longer just gnawing like one of Bricktop's dogs. It had graduated to the level of one of Bricktop's pigs, devouring two pounds of flesh a minute and cutting through bone like butter.

For a few minutes, a few street signs, there was blissful silence, and then he started talking again.

"They didn't mark you up or nothin', did they?" He peered at me, as though bruises were going to appear if he looked hard enough. "If they did, I'll go find that fuck Errol and fucking...I'll..."

"Bloody `ell Tommy," I said. "What's wrong with you t'day? You've gone from bein' mister tough guy ta my fuckin' mother. Sound just like `er too." I chanced a sideways look, and huge brown eyes stared back.

"Nothin's wrong. Nothin'. It's just that, well," he trailed off, biting his lip again.

"Well?"

"You're as white as a ghost, if you don't mind my saying so."

"You getting odd on me, boy?" He was two years younger, hated it when I called him boy, usually gave me a dirty look, but his face didn't even change today. He just stared stonily out the window and I left my hand on his shoulder.

"Don't worry about it, aright?"

My hand dropped. End of chat.

Now, Tommy's a contrary lad; I can get a fifteen minute monologue about how much he hates pykies or why I shouldn't drink milk, but I'd be lucky to get a two word answer to the most open-ended of personal questions. He's a dark horse, my Tommy.

We were getting out of town now, out to where trees lined the road and traffic was rare. No bustle, no chatter, just the soothing quiet and vast, empty grey skies that either comforted me or slowly drove me mad. Today it was the latter, and that must have been why I restarted the conversation that my companion was so adamant to finish. I needed something else to occupy my mind, keep it away from the looming question of what I was going to say to Mickey. If I lived long enough for words.

"Tommy?"

"What?"

"Why you so shaky?"

He shrugged.

"What's eating you?"

Another shrug.

"You'd better tell me, boy, or else I'll assume the worst."

"What is the worst, Turkish?" He said. He was looking away, leaning heavily against the door and propping his chin up with his hand. He didn't sound much like he cared, strange, for Tommy.

I didn't have an answer, so I put my hand on his back again. This seemed to prompt him much better than any words could.

"You look after me, better than anyone ever should," he said, eyes fixed on the blur of trees. "And when I had the chance ta show you I've got your back, I nearly couldn't. I nearly let you down." He glanced guiltily over. "Again."

My stomach twisted. I had a pretty good idea of what it felt like to be a constant disappointment. A failure. But more than I knew, Tommy knew. He couldn't handle himself alone, always needed someone to push him around and keep him in line. I'd been doing that so long that I'd forgotten that he, like everyone else on the planet, needed someone to pat him on the head and say `well done, guv' from time to time. Guiltily, I squeezed his shoulder. There's not much to him, my Tommy. He's all act, half his build is clothing, he hides his absence of muscle under a suit and a big duster coat and he'll jump at a shadow if the opportunity presents itself.

When I put my hand on him like that, he looked so hopeful, but scared too, like I was going to tell him to shut up and stop his moping.

"You did me proud, Tommy."

His face lit up. "Really Turkish, you mean that?"

I smiled at him, in spite of myself. "I said it, didn't I? You weren't too late," I admitted. "You were just in time."

His smile got wider, and he leaned into my hand, tipping his head so his cheek touched my knuckles. "Thank god," he breathed.

"No," I told him, turning my hand to touch his face and chancing a look away from the road in order to give him all the confirmation he needed. "God ain't got nothin' ta do with this. Thank _you_."

 


End file.
